BY B. JAY COOPER
Reprinted from BJayCooper.com

I had lunch a recently with an experienced Republican operative who happens to be from the South Carolina congressional district where Mark Sanford, the governor who said he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail but really was in Argentina with his mistress, is running for redemption. I also had dinner recently with a Democratic fund-raiser.

The Democrat and our other dinner companions (all three are Democrats) were joking about Sanford’s travails and saying there is no way he can win the special election. The Republican at lunch said he would win easily (Note: he said this before Sanford was nailed for trespassing in his ex-wife’s house watching the Super Bowl with  his young son and “trespassing,” meaning he violated his divorce agreement). When my Republican friend said the ex-governor would win, I questioned him, too, because my New England-based political views questioned how anyone with his latest pecadillos (the paramour lie, lying to his staff and the citizens of South Carolina, introducing his young son to his now-fiance, former paramour, at his primary victory party on stage, the trespassing) could pass voter muster. He smiled and said, “he does a good job” and went on to say that’s what voters there care about.

My point? Too often I’ve been in political discussions with my more liberal friends who assume they can read a Congressional district despite not ever having set foot in it. Years ago, when I was at the Republican National Committee, and the GOP hadn’t elected a black congressman in more than 50 years, we had several African-Americans running for Congress. We had to decide who best to invest our money in. Conventional wisdom was it should go to a candidate in Ohio who had some national visibility and was a great candidate. I am from the old 5th District in Connecticut and a black candidate was running there against a former Congressman, who hailed originally from the neighboring district. My DC colleagues saw this as a win for the Democrat since the opponent had already been in Congress and was well known. Being from that district, I saw it as carpet-bagger, district shopping so he could get back into office, something those voters (and many voters) don’t like.  and I helped our candidate develop a strategy leveraging the carpet-bagger criticism. We won. The candidate in Ohio lost.

So, much as I can’t see Sanford crawling back into office – I’ll wait and see. Locals know better than I do how to read an election and electorate.

Editor’s Note: B. Jay Cooper is a former White House deputy press secretary and former head of communications at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He also was a reporter at the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American. He is deputy managing director of the Washington, D.C., office of APCO Worldwide.